We’ll there was a few boxes for me when I got home from work the other day, full of our CD’s. It felt good. We had them replicated; when you get CD’s made, you can get them either “duplicated” or “replicated”. Duplicated is what most of us think of when we think of making cd’s – you burn them on cdr’s, then they get scratched and covered with coffee stains so they don’t work anymore. Replicated is when they make a glass master disc first, then turn it into metal stamper, then stamp the bejeezus out of little plastic pellets to give birth to a new CD, like this:
Dig the muzak in that clip: It reminds me of high school, watching an educational video in class, but then the canned music would start, so we’d be doing our obligatory 80′s-jive-beavus and butthead dance moves in the dimmed classroom, because the music made us. I wish our educational videos were as cool or freaky as this one:
Yeah, I would have been just as militant about the environment too…
On a whole entirely different note, there is a new book in the works…hopefully finished within the next 6 weeks. The book is an “outsiders” take on how one might make their own way through today’s music industry. But really, it could apply to anyone trying to establish a medium of growth around their creative work. As an independent artist, starting from scratch, I wanted to document how we are going about creating a space for our art to take root and develop, regardless of the crowded saturation and infinite diversions that are prevalent within our culture. This book happened because we happened. We decided to create this work, and like any other band, we want to communicate that work to an audience. We figured out the cultural and economic underpinnings of why certain things (e.g. certain labels, marketing, promotion, advertising, and online efforts etc) don’t often work for new artists, or don’t turn out the way you might think. The book is coming from the perspective that if you know why those things are broken, then you have a chance at fixing them to work for you. Probably the best thing about it is that we learned what we could absolutely ignore and not worry about – all the methods, instructions or advice you think you need, that in reality only serves to make one feel anxious or somehow lost if you cant access them. We haven’t re-invented the wheel, or done anything that you have never heard before – but we put it together in a way that sparked a light bulb moment for us. I’m going to post weekly excerpts from the book as it comes along….
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